


Tony Stark Makes A Friend

by theappleppielifestyle



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen or Pre-Slash, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-18
Updated: 2017-08-18
Packaged: 2018-12-16 20:08:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,855
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11836131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theappleppielifestyle/pseuds/theappleppielifestyle
Summary: As a rule, Tony doesn’t get to talk with kids his own age.(Or, Tony gets enrolled in a summer course so he can socialize with other kids for once. Steve is only there because his mother doesn't want him at home all day when she's at work.)





	Tony Stark Makes A Friend

As a rule, Tony doesn’t get to talk with kids his own age. By the time he’d become of age to actually go to school, he’d been so far ahead with the material that his parents got him a private tutor instead.

Tony doesn’t mind, mostly- on the rare occasions he does talk to kids his age, they never seem to like him. They’re put off by how quiet he is, or how he doesn’t know how to play any of the games, or that he doesn’t know much about talk to people beyond being polite and shutting up when grown-ups are talking. Sometimes he gets excited and starts rambling about science, but that only gets him strange looks. Or, when dad’s around, yells.

From what Tony understands from whisper-fights he overhears sometimes, Howard’s been arguing for a boarding school to take Tony, only to be repeatedly turned down because of his age- the headmaster had said something about not wanting to shove a ten year old into a group of boys who are starting puberty.

Tony is quietly glad. Older boys never seem to like him, either, and the idea of living away from home for most of the year scares him.

The summer Tony turns ten years old, his Mom comes into his room and asks him if he’d like to do a summer course at the nearby library.

Tony brightens. Sometimes the tutor- this year’s version, anyway- takes him to that very same library and lets him read King Arthur legends on Saturdays. Whatever he’ll be doing there, he’s sure he could finish it fast enough to find time to sneak off to the myths section.

“What course,” Tony asks.

Mom hesitates. She’s making that face that means she’s trying to phrase something to make it sound great when it really isn’t. “It’s a mixture of subjects, actually. Art, science, woodwork- it’s a public service where kids go to do extracurricular activities while school is closed over the summer.”

Tony blinks. “Why can’t I do those things at home? There are tutors for all of that stuff, right?”

“There are,” Mom nods. She shifts over and puts a hand on his shoulder, thumb rubbing. Tony leans into it as she continues, “But the reason we want you to attend this course is so you can- interact more with other kids.”

“Oh,” Tony says.

Mom bites her lip. She’s not wearing lipstick, which is strange. Usually she wears it all the time, even around the house. The only times Tony has seen her lipstick-less is when she’s just woken up.

“Would you like that,  _bambino_?”

Tony considers. Mom has tried this kind of thing before, bringing other people’s kids around, but it’s never ended well. Tony doesn’t see why this should be any different, but-

“Are they going to teach me stuff I don’t already know?”

She nods. “Even some of the scientific things, I think. You’ll be ahead of the rest of the kids in some areas, but there should be a lot for you to learn. Like- pottery.”

She squeezes his shoulder and smiles. It’s an encouraging smile, which means she wants Tony to be on board with this, and it’s because of this that Tony smiles back and tries to make it convincing. Mom’s been sad enough lately without him making it worse.

“Okay,” he says.

When she promises him he’ll have a good time, he forces himself to look excited and keeps it up until she’s all the way out of the room, closing the door behind her. Only then does Tony let the smile drop from his face; shoulders slumping. He can already imagine the other kids giving him weird looks when he either does everything too fast or gets too excited, or messes up talking with them.

 _Maybe it won’t be so bad_ , says a voice inside of him that sounds a bit like Mom.  _Maybe you’ll even make a friend, and Mom won’t be so sad about you anymore_ -

Tony sighs and climbs off the bed, heading over to his desk. He pulls out his physics homework and sets his gaze on the first question.

This, at least, he can do.

 

 

 

 

 

A few days later, Jarvis takes him to a part of the library he hasn’t been to before. It looks a bit like most of the classrooms Tony’s seen on TV, except more colourful. There are bean-bags in one corner, but Tony doesn’t know what they’re for, since there’s already enough seats for everyone and the bean bags would make it so people touched the desks with their foreheads if they were lucky.

The chairs, the proper ones, are very high. Tony expects that Jarvis’ feet would dangle over the floor if he sat on it.

“Why are the chairs so high,” he asks Jarvis quietly. Partly because he’s interested, but mainly to take his mind off of how many kids are piling into the class. Most of them don’t have escorts, like Tony, but Tony supposes they already know the way so they got let off at the library entrance.

Jarvis opens his mouth. Then he closes it. “I honestly have no idea,” he tells Tony. “But I do remember the chairs of my boyhood science room being the very same. I suppose it’s one of those things.”

Tony nods and starts taking out his supplies from his backpack. He’s had supplies before, but never a backpack. It’s plain black, though he’d toyed with asking for a space-themed one he’d seen online. Then, after imagining dad’s reaction, he’d decided against it and settled with whatever they got him.

As he’s checking he has the right number of pens and an assortment of colours- green, blue, red, black, in case they want him to colour-code his notes- he feels Jarvis put a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m afraid I have to leave you now,” says Jarvis. “But I’ll be back at 3.30. Do call me if there’s anything you’re worried about. Okay?”

Tony swallows.  _I’m worried now_ , he doesn’t say. There are still kids coming in and some of them are talking to each other, which means they already know each other, which means Tony is automatically stuck on the fringes looking in.

“Okay,” Tony says. He tries to push down the panic fluttering in his chest- most kids have this day, their parents leaving them on their first day of school, when they’re five. Tony’s  _ten_. He should be able to handle this, but he finds himself clutching his pens so he doesn’t do something stupid, like reach out to Jarvis.

Jarvis squeezes his shoulder, looking like he’s going to say something more. Eventually he says, “You shouldn’t expect this to be as intellectually stimulating as your usual study- don’t be surprised if they try to teach you things you’re already familiar with. Just sit through them until they get to something you don’t know. I hear they have a wonderful woodwork course you’ll be attending.”

Tony doesn’t much care about woodwork, but he nods.

“Okay,” Jarvis says quietly. He clears his throat and straightens. “Have a good day, Tony. I’ll see you at 3.30, just outside the entrance where we parked. Alright?”

“See you,” Tony says, too quiet.

Again, Jarvis looks like he’s going to continue. But he gives another nod, squeezes his shoulder once more and then leaves.

Tony watches him go, then turns back to his pens. The flow of kids has gone down to a trickle, and there’s an adult up front writing something on the board. Tony’s heart sinks as he recognizes maths he’d mastered before he was six.

He sits in silence and swings his feet in the air, then makes himself sit still. He tenses when a boy comes in and moves like he might sit next to him, but then the kid keeps walking and takes the seat that’s two down from Tony.

Tony glances at him, drags his gaze back to his pens and then glances again. The boy is blonde and his clothes are almost ratty, but not quite. He looks around Tony’s age, but he might be younger, since he’s so small. Then again, Tony’s small for ten, too.

By the time all the kids are seated there are a lot of empty chairs, including the chairs on either side of Tony.

“Now,” says the teacher a few minute after nine. There wasn’t a bell. “I know you all hate maths, but I’m going to keep it easy for you all, since you’re from different schools who teach different levels. You know the drill.”

Tony wonders if he’s allowed to start writing. The teacher hadn’t introduced herself, like in TV shows, but then again, it isn’t the first day of class and in this course it doesn’t seem to matter if you show up halfway through.

The teacher goes on to tell them to cut their teeth on the first five questions she’s written on the board, and Tony bends his head and writes out the answers as fast as any question. Then he looks up to check if the teacher’s going to continue, but she’s sitting at her desk checking her phone. When Tony looks around, all the other kids have their heads bent over their books. Some of them don’t even have books, just a notepad. One or two even have a scrap of paper.

Tony sneaks a look over at the closest person to him, the boy. At first it doesn’t look like he’s having trouble, but then Tony notices that the pen is constantly moving because he’s doodling. Big, swooping doodles that take over the page.

Tony watches in silence. When the teacher calls time-up five minutes later, Tony startles. The boy had started adding tiny details in with the big ones, and the effect had started to become very beautiful.

Tony ticks off his answers and then obediently writes down the next few problems the teacher puts up on the board. He finishes them in around thirty seconds and then goes back to watching the boy out of the corner of his eye. He does seem to be making an effort with the maths, and some of his answers are even correct, but he seems much more interested in doodling.

After another minute, he hears the boy make a noise under his breath. He shakes his pen and scribbles, but the unmarked part of the page stays that way.

Tony waits for him to take out another pen and keep drawing. He’s deemed it drawing now, because he doesn’t think something at this level should be called doodling. But instead, the boy puts his pen down and slumps over the desk, staring at the board.

Tony frowns. Why-? Oh.

It takes him a second, but he leans over. “Excuse me,” he says, quiet so the teacher doesn’t hear him. Not talking is important in school, right, even if this wasn’t school-school?

The boy blinks and looks over at him. “Yeah?”

Tony offers him his best black pen. The boy stares at it, and something like a smile crosses his face.

“Hey, thanks.” He takes it, and the pauses. “Um. Hey, this looks kinda fancy. You sure you don’t want to give me a worse one?”

Why would Tony want to do that? Besides, all his pens were that fancy. “It’s fine.”

“Okay,” the boy says, looking dubious. He sets the pen to the paper and starts drawing long, spiralling circles. The reluctant smile comes back again like he’s really enjoying the pen, or something, which Tony doesn’t get. It’s just a pen.

They don’t speak again until lunch, where everyone largely stays in their seats or goes over to the beanbags and plops down on them. So that’s what they’re for, Tony thinks as he pulls out his lunch, which is clearly divided in the separate compartments of his lunchbox. He takes out a cucumber sandwich with bean sprouts and starts chewing. It’s not his favourite kind of bread, but he’ll take it.

“Thanks again for the pen.”

Tony startles. The boy is leaning over to talk to him, but it looks like he’s not sure about it.

“You’re- welcome,” Tony says. He swallows his bite of sandwich and wonders if he should continue. The boy’s definitely looking at him like he should. “Uh, I like your doodles. They’re good.”

“What? Oh,” says the boy, looking back at his paper, which is 1/8th maths and 7/8ths drawings. “You think so? They just happen when I’m bored. Which is most days ‘cept art class. It’s tomorrow- are you coming in tomorrow?”

Tony wavers. “Aren’t we supposed to come every day?”

“Well, yeah,” the boy says. “But some people don’t. We ain’t getting graded on this, after all. I’m Steve.”

“I’m Tony,” says Tony, considering and then declining the idea to continue with his last name in the span of a second.

Steve pauses. Then he moves over to the chair next to Tony. “You come every day, too?”

“I will be.”

“Do your parents work, too?”

“My dad does,” Tony says. He picks at the crust of his sandwich. “My mom does charity work, which is different from work-work but it still counts.”

Steve nods. “My ma’s a nurse. She doesn’t like me to stay at home all day when she’s not there, so I come here when school’s closed. It’s okay. I like art the best, though. Everything else is kind of boring. Like when they make us do maths. Like we don’t get that enough at normal school.”

Tony keeps quiet. Is it normal to hate maths? He’s seen it alluded to on TV shows, but he never knew if that was real or just TV.

Steve seems to notice his silence. He looks down at Tony’s workbook, which Tony hastily tries to cover.

“Wow, you’re really good,” Steve says.

Tony stops halfway through covering his work. Steve doesn’t seem to be mocking him, just- surprised. Tony can deal with surprise. Everyone is surprised when they see how smart he is.

“Thanks,” Tony says. He thinks to Steve’s own work, which is sitting on the desk two chairs away, mostly doodles instead of maths. Is Tony supposed to offer to let Steve copy? He’s being strangely nice, and he doesn’t have the answers, and even if they don’t get graded on it it’s still nice to have the answers, right-

Tony nudges his workbook towards Steve. “Do you want to copy off mine?”

“What?”

Apparently Tony’s made the wrong decision, because Steve’s face closes off.

“I don’t cheat,” he says, eyebrows pulling inwards.

Tony wonders if he’s going to move back to his own chair now. “Sorry.”

Steve’s eyebrows stay pulled in for a few seconds, but then they start easing back to their usual places. Now he’s looking at Tony like he’s weird- but not quite; more like Tony’s a puzzle he wants to piece together. “Do you- let people cheat off you a lot? I bet lots of people ask, you being smart and all.”

Tony shakes his head, tentative. He’s still not sure how bad he’s blown it. “I’m homeschooled.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “Why?”

Tony looks down at his paper. His answers sit neat and easy on the page. “Because I’m, uh, smart.”

Steve leans his elbows on the desk. “Why don’t they just bump you up? My friend Bucky, his cousin’s real smart and they just put him up a year.”

“I’m very smart,” Tony says, and then cringes. This is the kind of stuff that makes other kids think he’s stuck up. Trying to make up for it, he says, “They say if I went up to the year I’m learning at I’d be with teenagers, and they don’t want to do that because I’m too young. I think they’ll let me when I’m a few years older, though. I heard dad talking about it.”

Steve goggles. “Whoa. So this must be peanuts for you.”

He gestures at the board. Tony shrugs.

“This’ll be a boring day for you too, then,” Steve says.

Tony shrugs again, shoulders locking up at the top of the movement for a moment. He clears his throat. “Do you- want me to teach you,” he offers tentatively. This can’t be insulting, right? He’s being helpful and not accusing Steve of anything. Unless Steve thinks he’s being called stupid, which-

“Nah,” Steve says, and Tony almost crumples in relief at the lack of accusation in his tone. “I do fine at school, it’s just harder here,” Steve continues. “Hey-”

But Tony doesn’t get to find out what Steve is saying next, because the teacher claps her hands and tells everyone to get back in their seats.

As the kids who took over the bean-bags start to climb back on their chairs, Tony waits for Steve to hop over to the other chair. Instead, Steve drags his bag and his notebook over to the place he’s sitting now- next to Tony. He looks half-anxious about it, too, but the longer Tony doesn’t say anything about it, the more Steve’s shoulders relax.

Tony doesn’t cover his paper as he does the next few maths questions, in case Steve wants to copy after all, but Steve doesn’t. Instead he keeps doodling, pages and pages of it, holding Tony’s pen like it’s something precious.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tony doesn’t find out why Steve loves the pen so much until two weeks later. At some point, Steve lets slip that the fountain pen just feels smoother, so much nicer than the pens he usually gets- “You know how some pens feel nicer than others,” he explains, and Tony thinks back to his science homework, which he mostly uses biros for.

“Sure,” Tony says, and Steve grins. He grins sometimes now, and they’re hard to get out of him but when they come Tony feels prouder than anything.

They sit next to each other every day now, which Tony thinks both of them had been nervous about at first, but once they’d realized that the other would be cool with it they’d both started doing it automatically.

Tony is curious about why Steve seems so nervous about it, but one day when Jarvis is driving him to the library he lets Tony in on something that seemed obvious looking back on it.

“Maybe he’s not the greatest at making friends, either,” he tells Tony.

Tony’s first reaction is  _why_. Steve’s one of the best people Tony’s ever met.

“Well,” Jarvis says, “Maybe people don’t see that. Like how most people don’t see how amazing you are.”

Tony doesn’t know how to respond to that, but he leans into Jarvis’ shoulder squeeze just before he gets let out of the car.

When Tony sits down in class that day, Steve is already there, doodling. It’s art day again, and it looks like Steve’s getting a head start.

“Hey, Tony,” Steve says when Tony sits down.

“Hi,” Tony says. He looks at Steve and wonders. None of the other kids seem to like Steve, but they don’t seem to dislike him, either. Mostly they don’t pay much attention.

Steve has Bucky, though, so that has to be at least one friend. Steve mentions Bucky at least once a day, and it seems like they’re a kind of close that Tony thought only existed in stories. So one other kid has to have noticed how great Steve is.

At lunch, Tony asks. He doesn’t come right out and say it-  _do you only have one friend_ \- but he skirts around it like Mom teaches him how to do sometimes, in a way that makes it subtle but inevitable to come up with the answer you’re looking for.

Steve goes quiet. For a second, Tony thinks he’s messed up.

“Buck’s pretty much the only person I hang out with at school, yeah,” Steve says. “And ever.”

Then he starts chewing his sandwich with a kind of sullen viciousness that Tony doesn’t think suits the situation.

“Okay,” Tony says. “I thought so. I just wanted to know.”

“Why?”

“I- thought it was weird. You’re nice and you’re good at talking to people, so I thought you should have more friends.”

Steve turns to him. He looks stung, his eyes challenging. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No!” Tony starts turning over his last words in his head. Should he have phrased them differently?

Steve is looking at him like he’s weird again, but not in the way that makes Tony want to hide. Instead, Steve looks like he wants to figure him out.

“I thought-” Steve hunches his shoulders, then unhunches them fast like he thinks Tony’s going to call him out on it. “Everyone in my neighbourhood thinks I’m a ‘bad egg’ ‘cause I get into a lot of fights at school.”

Tony stares. “You do? Why?”

Another shoulder-hunch, this time in the form of a shrug. “I don’t like bullies,” he says. Then, “You think I’m good at talking to people?”

Tony thinks about it. “Better than me,” he says finally.

Steve laughs quietly. It’s not a mean laugh, because Steve doesn’t do mean laughs. “You’re alright,” he tells Tony. He toys with the plastic wrap around his sandwich, looking down at it, then up at Tony. “What about you, what’re your friends like?”

Tony is quiet. He wonders if he should mention Jarvis.

Steve looks at him for several long seconds. Then he says, “If you want, I’ll be your friend.”

“Okay,” Tony whispers. He clears his throat. “Okay, I’d- okay.”

“Okay,” Steve says back. He looks down at his sandwich again, but there’s a smile growing on his face, like the first time he’d started drawing with Tony’s fountain pen. “Hey, want to come over later? Ma’s making meatloaf.”

Tony startles. “I’ll- I’ll ask my parents,” he says, and fumbles his phone out of his pocket. He’s halfway through a text to his mother when Steve says, “Whoa, you got an iphone? My Ma’s not letting me have one ‘til next year, you’re lucky. That looks like one of the fancy ones, too.”

Tony mumbles something, because Steve isn’t currently clued in to how rich or how famous Tony’s family is. He hopes Steve won’t mind, when he finds out. Or when Tony tells him. He thinks he should tell Steve before Steve stumbles onto it, but right now he’s putting it off as long as he can.

His phone vibrates five minutes after class resumes, and even through text Tony can tell how overjoyed his mother is, even if he’s toning it down. He smiles down at his phone and imagines meatloaf- he’s never had it before, but he’s seen it on sitcoms- in the small, cozy apartment that Steve has described, a place with leaks and crooked doorframes, a home that feels more homely than Tony’s mansion ever has.

Tony leans over to Steve. “They say I can come,” he tells him.

“Great,” Steve whispers back. He’s still wearing that smile, the special one, the one that warms Tony to his toes.

**Author's Note:**

> here's my [tumblr](http://theappleppielifestyle.tumblr.com/).


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